Gowland takes his camera underwater with perfect results.
This week’s image from the Goodtime Weekly Calendar of 1963 features glamour model Joanne Arnold and was made by Peter Gowland, whose name is probably familiar to all the photographers out there, but perhaps not to everyone else. Gowland, the son of actor Gibson Gowland and actress Sylvia Andrew, was not only one of the most famous glamour photographers of the 1950s and 1960s, but he also built highly precise cameras that are still sought after today. These cameras ranged from handheld to studio-sized, and he also built special underwater cameras, one of which we can assume he used in making the image above. Gowland’s work appeared in too many magazines to name, and he shot everyone from Tallulah Bankhead to Muhammad Ali during a career that only ended with his death in 2010. There are several more Gowland images in the Goodtime Calendar—none of which have ever appeared online as far as we know—and they’ll be coming up in due time. Calendar text appears below.
May 12: Mother’s Day. Today a fella can tell his wife truthfully that he’s off to see his best girl.
May 13: “A lot of self-made men should deny it.”—Henry Morgan
May 14: A girl used to get her good looks from her mother; now from the beauty parlor.
May 15: Parents used to worry when their teenagers were out driving—now it’s their parking.
May 16: “In Hollywood many a girl carries a torch for a man… she doesn’t trust him in the dark.”—Peggie Castle
May 17: “We doubt that swimming is good for the figure. Ever take a good look at the whale?”—Alex Dreier
May 18: “A deep sea diver got a message: ‘Come up quickly—the ship is sinking!”—Simmy Bow
She’s always the life of the party.
Once again we can’t identify this week’s Goodtime Weekly Calendar girl, but at least we’ve seen her before. She appeared in the April 1962 issue of Topper, which, if you’ve never heard of it, is a vintage magazine devoted to big-breasted women. She was in a pictorial dancing topless for a group of beer-swilling guys—which is a scene that would be familiar to anyone who’s experienced spring break in Cancún. And a few pages later she’s Miss Homecoming, i.e. the centerfold. The photos were shot by that rascal Ron Vogel, who has more pages upcoming in the calendar. The quips are transcribed below, including one from Will Rogers, who was known for his homespun wisdom, but just spins his wheels here. More Goodtime Weekly next Saturday.
May 5: Be nice to pretty girls ’til you make your first million. After that they’ll be nice to you.
May 6: “Experience may be the best teacher but the one I had in grammar school was prettier.”—Don McNeill
May 7: A woman says the best interoffice communicatios device so far is the coffee break.
May 8: “Every time they (Congressmen) make a joke it’s a law. And every time they make a law it’s a joke.”—Will Rogers.
May 9: “He who is in charge of a crime is vice president.”—He-who Who-he
May 10: If a dame tells you she loves you more than anything else, take heed… she’s been experimenting.
May 11: KISS as posted in some brass’ office means “Keep It Simple, Stupid.”
Yeah, I know it’s a weird pose, but these babies need all the support they can get.
We’ve reached the end of our second month of the Goodtime Weekly Calendar of 1963 with another image from renowned pin-up photog Ron Vogel, once more shooting a model unknown to us. We’re getting the sense, though, that he preferred his women busty. This week’s quips include a maxim from La Rochefoucuald, as well as observations from Paul Gibson, and others, plus an unattributed one-liner about Easter, a holiday we’re pretty sure came weeks before April 28, even in 1963. Well, with so many razor sharp witticisms needing to be published, how could the boys at Goodtime Weekly possibly be expected to fit in their uproarious Easter quip on Easter Sunday? This batch, we swear, will have you on the floor. In fact, maybe don’t read them at all. Yeah, thinking about it, that’s our recommendation—just skip them and get on with your day.
April: 28: Weather forecast for Easter: cloudy, early dew on the ground, some places there may be eggs.
April 29: “Some girls use their heads just for hair-dos.”—Jack Brickhouse
April 30: “In their first passions, women love the lover, and in others they love love.”—La Rochefoucuald
May 1: “Some girls play hard to get; others just play hard.”—Arnold Glasgow
May 2: “A playboy is a fickle pickle who before kissing his girl goodbye has his next already picked out.”—Ann Landers.
May 3: “A woman loves to be loved, but why does she do so little to have it happen?”—Paul Gibson.
May 4: Love never dies of starvation, but often of indigestion.—French Prov.
And now I'll demonstrate proper fingering technique.
The Good Time Weekly Calendar of 1963 offers up an excellent Mexican-themed image for the week beginning April 21. We don’t know the model, but the photographer is identified as Turhan Bey. The name sounded familiar, so we looked him up and found that before he stepped behind the lens he was an actor known as The Turkish Delight. His career began in 1941, and he appeared in many movies, but that wasn't why he sounded familiar. He sounded familiar because he appeared on television as recently as 1998 in a recurring role on the sci-fi series Babylon 5. It was in the mid-1950s that Bey decided to try his hand at photography, and we can't argue with the results.
This week's quips come from some of the usual suspects, but also include an observation from 15th century playwright William Congreve. In Congreve the folks at Good Time Weekly have finally chosen a wit worthy of respect. Congreve not only popularized the expression “kiss and tell,” but also originated the lines, “Music has charms to soothe a savage breast,” and “Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned, nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.” But our favorite Congreve is this one: “Uncertainty and expectation are the joys of life. Security is an insipid thing.” We remind ourselves of that every moment we go without internet service. But insipid security looms, finally—we’re told service will be established in our new place within seven days.
April 21: “Love is a game of continuous surprise; he who is smart should never blow his knows.”—He-who Who-he
April 22: Everybody loves a lover but not when he’s on a public phone.
April 23: “Intuition is the strange instinct that tells a woman she is right whether she is or not.”—Paul Gibson
April 24: Women and glass are always in danger.—Portuguese Prov.
April 25: “Oh, fie, Miss, you must not kiss and tell.”—William Congreve
April 26: “Actually, most women keep secrets as well as men. It just takes more women.”—St. Clyde Melton, Jr.
April 27: “In Hollywood half the people are waiting to be discovered—the other half are afraid they will be.”—Pat Buttram.
Psst, lady, your aura is showing.
Above, another page from the Goodtime Weekly Calendar, the week beginning April 14, 1963. The model in this rather psychedelic image is uncredited, and the phtog is listed as anonymous. The shot is nice though. We can almost hear Jefferson Airplane playing in the background. A couple of the quips this week have to do with tax day, and are about as funny as tax day too. But sorry, we're going to keep sharing these because, well, without the text this is just porn, isn't it?
April 14: Just one more day to make up your mind: list item by item, or chicken out right now.
April 15: "Preparing an income tax return is like a girl going to the beach; you take off as much as the law alows."—Arthur Godfrey.
April 16: The easily swayed girl is a hula dancer.
April 17: "When her eye flickers rapdily at you like a tail light, watch out for her turns."—He-who Who-he
April 18: He who claims to be the boss of his house is either a bachelor or his wife is out of town.
April 19: The weaker sex is indeed the stronger because of the weakness of the stronger sex.
April 20: "The Twist proves that America is coming alive below the waist."—Richard Chamberlain.
Care to join me for a nightcap?
Our fifth installment of the Good Time Weekly Calendar of 1963 features a model that is damnably familiar, but we just can’t come up with her name. We can tell you she was shot by renowned pin-up photog Ron Vogel, if that helps. Love the ornamental wine decanter, by the way. The week’s quips are below, and for a change a couple of them are actually clever.
Apr 7: “Girls who accept rings from men they don’t know are telephone operators.”—Sam Cowling
Apr 8: Why girls kiss and make up? Because the stuff rubs off.
Apr 9: Think now or pay later: Are your in-laws legalized charities?
Apr 10: “It doesn’t take much for a girl to hook a guy: He usually supplies the line himself.”—Tom Poston
Apr 11: “To a smart girl men are no problem—they’re the answer.”—Zsa Zsa Gabor
Apr 12: Three more days to decide either the debt is going to be the U.S.’s or yours.
Apr 13: “He who will gladly listen to both sides of an argument is a neighbor on the party line.”—He-who Who-he
We’re gonna need a bigger tub.
After two weeks of unknowns, we’re back to a face we recognize on this installment of the Good Time Weekly Calendar of 1963. She’s none other than Diane Webber, aka Marguerite Empey, one of the most popular nudist models of the 1960s, photographed by Peter Chiodo. We say “nudist” rather than nude because she specialized in posing for sun worshipper publications, of which we posted a rather entertaining collection here way back in 2008. Below are the usual transcriptions of daily quips from the calendar. And like always, some of them are nonsensical to us. For instance, did people really call women "turnpikes" back then? And what the hell is Jackie Gleason on about? No idea. But we’ll keep sharing these little quotations anyway on the off chance you get a chuckle out of them.
March 31: “Man to man: Planting gardens is strictly for the birds.”—He-who Who-he
April 1: “April Fool. Our favorite Biblical truth for today is: Do one to others as others do one to you.”—Art Linkletter
April 2: Tranquilizers in April are sold to help decide the line between straight income or capital gain.
April 3: Women’s hair rinse: Wash-and-wear.
April 4: “Don’t call any woman a turnpike unless it’s absolutely true—not a curve in sight.”—He-who Who-he
April 5: “Remember the good old days? The ‘cold war’ was only a fight between you and the janitor.”—Jackie Gleason
April 6: The twist is not possible in Russia because too much is already twisted there.
The Good Times just keep on coming.
Another Saturday, another installment from the Good Time Weekly Calendar of 1963. The model above resisted all attempts at identification, and the photographer is listed as anonymous, but fret not—the daily quotations are faithfully transcribed below. This time, women are the targets of the assorted quipsters. We know this type of humor was considered good fun back then, but really, isn't it a little twisted to bash women while looking at their naked bodies for sexual gratification? Just asking. Still no clue on the He-who Who-he reference, by the way. Anyone with info please feel free to drop us a line.
March 24: “In most of our Hollywood beauty shops the gossip alone would curl your hair.”—Pat Buttram
March 25: “One picture is worth 10,000 words—but for some reason most women prefer to use 10,000 words.”—George Gobel
March 26: No one can tell her anything—she’s got sound proof ears.
March 27: “In many conversations a man can’t break in because a woman won’t break off.”’—Telly Savalas
March 28: You never know how much the voice can change till a woman stops yelling and answers the phone.
March 29: “A woman doesn’t tell the truth all the time—there just isn’t that much truth.”—He-who Who-he
March 30: “The best way to tie a woman down is with a telephone cord.”—Paul Gibson.
Are you still planning to catch and release?
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. In celebration here’s our second posting from the Good Time Weekly Calendar of 1963, featuring a net-draped model we can’t identify shot by a photographer named Shulman who we also can’t identify. So there. Calendar text is transcribed below. Boy they sure knew how to get a laugh out of people back then. Or not.
March 17: “Ladies’ evening dresses are getting more daring. The front is now daring the back.”—Leslie Uggams
March 18: “Running into debt isn’t so bad; it’s running into your creditors that’s embarrassing.”—O.G. Zimmerman
March 19: “Would you call a girls’ baseball team ‘swatter girls’?”—Sam Cowling
March 20: Sweater girls are divided into two classes; those who knit them and those who fit them,”—Paul Fogarty
March 21: “Most men lack imagination and that’s why dress designers leave so little to it.”—Peggie Castle
March 22: Two things make women slow… first she must make up her mind and then her face.”—Keith Preston
March 23: Short dresses do not affect women’s appearance much; they just make the men look longer.”—Sam Cowling
So, who were all these people? We found nothing on O.G. Zimmerman, Paul Fogarty, and Keith Preston. We already knew Leslie Uggams and Peggie Castle—singer and actress respectively—and they have Wikipedia entries if you’re curious. So that leaves Sam Cowling. It’s Cowling who gets the lion’s share of quotes in the Good Time Calendar, so we expected him to have been quite famous and he was. He was a member of a vocal group called The Romeos, but later became a regular cast member of a radio variety program called The Breakfast Club. The hourlong program, hosted by Don McNeill, ran from 1933 until 1968, and Cowling (below right) came aboard in ’37, having
by then transformed himself from a singer into an improvisational comedian. Working off the cuff was a good fit for his new gig, since apparently The Breakfast Club was mostly unscripted. The extemporaneous format was a big success, and helped set a mold for morning radio shows that holds even today. It also made the leap to television as a special event in 1948. Wanna hear The Breakfast Club? Go to the bottom of this page. For video check here. We’re off to have a glass or several of green beer.
The resurrection of Lazzaro.
So, last week we mentioned that we had found the best calendar of all time at the Denver Book Fair. Above is the first image we’re posting from it, a tinted shot of Sophia Loren’s famous nude scene in 1951’s Era lui... sì! sì!, in which she appeared as Sophia Lazzaro. By 1953 she had begun acting as Loren, leaving the Lazzaro screen name behind forever. Her nude scene was never a secret, exactly, but until the internet came along stills from Era lui appeared only in porn and scandal magazines—and, apparently, obscure calendars. So thank you world wide web for making formerly impossible-to-find nudity readily available via a mouseclick or two.
This calendar—The Goodtime Weekly Calendar of 1963, printed in the U.S. by Good Time Publishing—has a nude or pin-up image for every week of the year, and in addition, a joke, quote, or pithy saying for every day of each week. The sayings are illegibly small on our posted image, so we’ve transcribed them below. But don’t thank us until you read them. While a couple are mildly amusing, most aren’t, and one is simply incomprehensible (March 14). We hope they improve as the year continues, but if they don’t, think of them anthropologically—i.e., try to value them as artifacts of an older culture that we're going to study for whatever insights we can glean. And if that doesn’t interest you, well, you can just look at the pretty photos. We’ll post one calendar page per week, along with its text, until we run through all fifty-two.
March 10: “Sophia Loren has been awarded an Oscar for Two Women. By gosh, she certainly is.”—Bob Hope.
March 11: Figures don’t lie; that’s why an honest man believes in good sizes.
March 12: “A gossip always gives you the benefit of the dirty.”—Sam Cowling.
March 13: Anybody who still says the sky’s the limit is way behind the times.
March 14: “Tips from outer space: Tired of chimps and dogs and men—try us with a woman.”—He-who Who-he
March 15: “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.—Henry Cooke.
March 16: “Beauty contests didn’t start in Atlantic City or any other city; they began when the second woman arrived on Earth.”—Mitch Miller.
